Friday, December 29, 2006

Italy's antiquities prosecutor, Maurizio Fiorilli, has become the darling of the media in the past year helping to persuade the American public, and particularly the art world, to rethink the ethics of holding onto Italy's cultural patrimony with words like: "Until now we have dreamed, we have slept. Now it is time to wake up." Words meant to be heard back home in Italy, perhaps, but shot around the world via the Los Angeles Times.

An antiquities movement, a wave was created, essentially, and a signing of repatriation agreements with major US museums followed. It came at a time when people, as an escape from senseless US wars they did not vote for, suddenly took interest in an antiquities conspiracy trial in Rome. Visuals of ancient art in the media -- images of the humans we once were -- became huge with meaning.

How do you know it's been an extraordinary year in archaeology? When the discovery of the earliest Maya writing and a 2,500-year-old sarcophagus decorated with scenes from the Iliad don't crack ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 list:

THE lives of the bronze age people who settled, worked and traded in East Cambridgeshire are shrouded in mystery.

But a dedicated band of volunteers in Sutton is throwing light on this integral part of our past, and look set to make real advances in our archaeological understanding of East Cambridgeshire in the new year.

IAN RAY reports on a project that shows how a community-organised venture has made a significant contribution to our knowledge of local pre-history.

FOR more than three years now, a group of volunteers, who have named themselves the Sutton Archaeological Group, have worked steadily to excavate a Bronze Age barrow at the village's gravel pits.

A statue belonging to the Roman era was found in an olive depot located in Gemlik, Bursa.

Police have raided an olive depot after being notified about an illegal historical artifact trade. A statue of two women holding a globe in their hands is assumed to belong the Roman era was captured.Police said the owners of the depot was trying to sell the statue for $ 15 million to some foreign buyers.

According to an information obtained from Bursa Police Department, Gemlik police was notified about two illegal traders; 46 year old Kemal K. and his friend Ismail A. Security teams have detected 6 different addresses for the suspects and raided all 6 addresses concurrently on Wednesday.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

The University of Oslo has decided to move three grand Viking ships, probably by truck and barge, to a new museum across town, despite dire warnings that the thousand-year-old oak vessels could fall apart en route.

A retired curator of the current Viking Ship Museum said that the fragile ships, two of which are nearly 24 meters, or 80 feet, long, were almost equal in archaeological importance to the Pyramids.

"Even if I have to live till I am 100, I will go on fighting this move," the former curator, Arne Emil Christensen, who is 70, said in an interview. "The best way to stop it is still through diplomacy, but, if necessary, I will be in front of the ships, chained to the floor."

The university board of directors voted this month to move the sleek- hulled vessels, over the objections of Christensen and several other scholars, including the former director of the British Museum, David Wilson, and the director of the Center for Maritime Archaeology in Denmark, Ole Crumlin- Pedersen. The board wants to transport the ships from a remote Oslo peninsula where they have been housed for more than 75 years to a large, multifaceted museum in the center of the capital.

In this personal-voice and very witty short film by University of Southern California student Amy Ramsey, the archaeologist/filmmaker explores what the public knows, and often misconstrues, about her field of study. She interviews people and finds out that they often have inaccurate perceptions about archaeology. She concludes that the media are largely responsible for misleading people about archaeology and urges her audience to be a bit skeptical about archaeology stories they see and hear through media sources.

Unlike its larger, postcard-perfect neighbors in the Aegean Sea, Keros is a tiny rocky dump inhabited by a single goatherd.

But the barren islet was of major importance to the mysterious Cycladic people, a sophisticated pre-Greek civilization with no written language that flourished 4,500 years ago and produced strikingly modern-looking artwork.

A few miles from the resorts of Mykonos and Santorini, Keros is a repository of art from the seafaring culture whose flat-faced marble statues inspired the work of 20th century masters Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore.

Indeed, more than half of all documented Cycladic figurines in museums and collections worldwide were found on Keros. Now, excavations by a Greek-British archaeology team have unearthed a cache of prehistoric statues -- all deliberately broken -- that they hope will help solve the Keros riddle.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

The University of Oslo has decided to move three grand Viking ships, probably by truck and barge, to a new museum across town despite dire claims that the thousand-year-old oak vessels could fall apart en route.

A retired curator of Oslo's current Viking Ship Museum said the delicately preserved ships, two of which are nearly 80 feet long, were almost equal in archaeological importance to the pyramids.

"Even if I have to live till I am 100, I will go on fighting this move," the former curator, Arne Emil Christensen, 70, said in an interview. "The best way to stop it is still through diplomacy, but, if necessary, I will be in front of the ships, chained to the floor."

The university's board of directors voted, 8-3, this month to move the sleek-hulled vessels over the objections of Christensen and several other Viking Age scholars, including the former director of the British Museum, David Wilson, and the director of Denmark's Center for Maritime Archaeology, Ole Crumlin-Pedersen. The board wants to transport the popular ships from a remote Oslo peninsula where they have been housed for more than 75 years to a large, multifaceted museum in the center of the capital.Read the rest of this article...

The company behind the UK's largest onshore wind farm project, proposed for the Hebridean island of Lewis (Outer Hebrides, Scotland), has unveiled revised plans for the scheme. The reworked proposal comprises 181 wind turbines compared with the 234 which were originally planned. While the overall number of turbines has been reduced, the impact on the archaeology of Lewis may be catastrophic.

The real problem is not just that the archaeology of Lewis is practically unknown, but the whole of the interior of the island is covered by raised peat bog that can be several metres thick. This was formed since the Bronze age (Callanish before it was excavated was a few stones sticking up through over a metre of bog). So there is likely to be a whole buried prehistoric landscape below the peat, but it is very difficult to detect. Numerous stone circles, burial mounds and cemeteries, settlements and houses, burnt mounds, fields and field boundaries can all be expected. This could be potentially one of the best preserved prehistoric landscapes in the world.

Kennet District Council is to close its tourist office at its World Heritage site at Avebury (Wiltshire, England). Despite the ancient stone circle attracting huge numbers of visitors every year the council wants its tourist office to close in October. Members of the community development executive were given a report at their November meeting outlining options for the future of Avebury Tourist Information Centre. They agreed to close the TIC, which is based in the Chapel, with effect from October 31, 2007 subject to the satisfactory resolution of legal and staffing issues. The process of negotiation and consultation has now started.

Friday, December 22, 2006

Terminal 5, Heathrow, has been one of the biggest construction projects in the world. Excavations by Framework Archaeology, in advance of the construction works, have uncovered almost 9,000 years of history.

The land the new Terminal is being built on was previously a sewage sludge works. The divisions on this photograph mark the drying beds of the sludge works.

Archaeologists have excavated the ditch around an Iron Age roundhouse, which was dug to drain the water running off the roof.

Terminal 5, Heathrow, has been one of the biggest construction projects in the world. Excavations by Framework Archaeology, in advance of the construction works, have uncovered almost 9,000 years of history.

It is rare for wooden objects to survive from the Bronze Age (c.2400-700 BC). This wooden bowl survived because it was kept damp, in a waterhole.

Some had turned up in flowing robes while others were wearing lovingly-crafted winter solstice wreaths decorated with berries and ivy.

The problem for the assorted pagans, druids and pantheists who arrived at Stonehenge yesterday morning to celebrate the winter solstice was that they had arrived a day early.

Around 60 people had gathered at the stone circle, cloaked in frost and fog, to celebrate what they believed was the winter solstice. The staff who guard the precious monument in Wiltshire explained they were 24 hours early.

Archaeologists in Burnt City announced unprecedented discovery of an artificial eyeball, dated to 4800 years ago, in this historic site.

Announcing this news, director of Burnt City archaeology excavation team, Mansur Sajadi, said that this eyeball belongs to a sturdy woman who was between 25 to 30 years of age at the time of death. Skeletal remains of the woman were found in grave number 6705 of Burnt City's cemetery.

Regarding the material used to make this artificial eyeball, Sajadi said: "The material this artificial eyeball is made of has not yet been determined and will be assessed through later testing. However, at first glance it seems natural tar mixed with animal fat has been used in making it."

A few years ago, an international team of researchers went to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and drilled down five kilometers below sea level in an effort to uncover secrets about the earth's climate history. They exceeded their expectations and have published their findings in the Dec. 22 edition of the journal Science.

The researchers' drilling produced pristine samples of marine microfossils, otherwise known as foraminifera. Analysis of the carbonate shells of these microfossils, which are between 23 million to 34 million years-old, has revealed that the Earth's climate and the formation and recession of glaciation events in the Earth's history have corresponded with variations in the earth's natural orbital patterns and carbon cycles.

The researchers were particularly interested in these microfossils because they came from the Oligocene epoch, a time in Earth's history known for falling temperatures.

"The continuity and length of the data series we gathered and analyzed allowed for unprecedented insights into the complex interactions between external climate forcing, the global carbon cycle and ice sheet oscillations," said Dr. Jens Herrle, co-author of the paper and a micropaleontology professor at the University of Alberta.

A Hull York Medical School (HYMS) researcher has played a key role in a study which has cast important new light on Neanderthals.

Dr Markus Bastir was part of an Anglo-Spanish team which studied 43,000-year-old Neanderthal remains at El Sidrón in Spain, revealing significant physical differences between those from northern and southern Europe.

Dr Bastir, who was based in the functional morphology and evolution research unit of HYMS (fme) for the last two years, analysed the mandibles of Neanderthals discovered at El Sidrón. The analysis revealed north–south variations, with southern European Neanderthals showing broader faces with increased lower facial heights. The research findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Viking longships ruled the seas 1,000 years ago and even crossed the Atlantic and now three of them may face a new perilous trip -- albeit just 6 km (4 miles) across Oslo.

Oslo University, which looks after them, wants to move the ancient wooden vessels from the Viking Ship Museum on the edge of the Norwegian capital to a new city-centre museum for all Viking artefacts.Click to learn more...

But Wednesday's vote for the move by the university board sparked disputes on Thursday about whether or not they were strong enough to survive or would splinter apart on the way.

"We shouldn't just look at the troubles ... we could make the best Viking ship museum in the world" by moving the ships, Egil Mikkelsen, director of the Viking Ship Museum, told Reuters.

Rome's famous tourist attraction to partially open in midst of restoration

Nero's Golden Palace will be partially reopened to tourists in January, even while archaeologists and restorers keep working to shore up the ancient imperial residence which had been in danger of collapsing because of heavy rains.

Starting Jan. 30, small groups will be allowed to visit about half of the sections that were open before rainwater infiltrated the building a year ago, damaging frescoes and raising safety concerns, officials said during a tour on Tuesday.

Restoration of the 1st century palace will continue during the tours and special scaffolding has been set up to protect visitors from any falling debris.

The palace of Nero, one of Rome's most popular tourist sites, will partly reopen to the public in January after being closed for more than a year for emergency repairs, officials said.

The Domus Aurea, or House of Gold, had attracted an average of 1,000 visitors every day until water leaks last December stoked fears that the nearly 2,000-year-old palace might collapse.

Italy's government and the city of Rome have earmarked more than 4 million euros ($5.27 million) for the repairs, which officials described on Tuesday as part of a broader initiative to rescue the city's eroding archaeological sites.

"The Domus Aurea is the crown jewel of a more important (restoration) job we're doing," said Rome mayor Walter Veltroni.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Combe Down Stone Mines near Bath are being stabilised and recorded as part of a long running programme by Oxford Archaeology.

The mines, situated about two kilometres south of the city of Bath, were extensively quarried for the highly sought after Bath limestone between 1730 and 1860 and did not cease operations until the early years of the 20th century. The high quality stone was used not only for buildings in Bath but also in the construction of prestigious buildings such as Buckingham Palace.

Working in tandem with Hydrock, the structural engineering company who are stabilising the site, Oxford Archaeology hope to assess the significance of the deposits and provide advice upon their preservation and recording.

Ianto Wain, Project Manager of the site says, “We have to be reactive so we have a permanent archaeologist who goes down with the engineers to record the deposits they encounter."

The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde has reconstructed a long ship from the Viking age to undertake a voyage to Dublin, Ireland

An exact reconstruction of a Viking ship from the 11th century will be launched in 2007 on a historic journey from Roskilde to Dublin and back.

Ship owner Carsten Brebøl's non-profit foundation has donated DKK 2 million to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde to support the project. The new ship has been dubbed The Sea Stallion.

The original ship, Skulderlev 2, was built in Dublin in 1042 and found at the bottom of Roskilde Fiord in 1962. Since then the ship has been on display at the Viking Ship Museum.

The Sea Stallion, named one of twelve representatives of outstanding Danish design and craftsmanship in the Cultural Canon by the Ministry of Culture, has been built at the Viking Ship Museum Boat yard using the methods, materials and tools of the Viking Age. The boat has a length of 30 meters, a 3.8 meter width and a total of 60 oars. It can hold a crew of up to 100. Read the rest of this article...

An astonishing discovery in an Irish bog is posing an unusual conservation challenge. A chance find by a peat cutter last summer in County Tipperary, southern Ireland, turned out to be a psalter, which has been dated to around 800 AD. The discovery has been described as the Irish equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

National Museum of Ireland conservator Rolly Read and his team are now stabilising the compacted vellum mass. The difficult issue is how to separate the pages, preserving as much as possible of the ancient text.

Monday, December 18, 2006

CHINON, France - A rib bone and a piece of cloth supposedly recovered after Joan of Arc was burned at the stake are probably not hers, according to experts trying to unravel one of the mysteries surrounding the 15th century French heroine.

Eighteen experts began a series of tests six months ago on the fragments reportedly recovered from the pyre where the 19-year-old was burned for heresy.

Although the tests have not been completed, findings so far indicate there is "relatively little chance" that the remnants are hers, Philippe Charlier, the head of the team, told The Associated Press on Saturday.

The fragment of linen from the 15th century "wasn't burned. It was dyed," Charlier said. And a blackened substance around the 6-inch rib bone was not "carbonized remains" but vegetable and mineral debris, "something that rather resembles embalming substance," he said.

Archaeologists at Wessex Archaeology have completed a 3D animation that reveals a prehistoric landscape, now submerged under the English Channel, as it might have appeared 8000 years ago. At the end of the last ice age the River Arun in West Sussex flowed a further 8 miles out. Archaeological survey has revealed the lay of the land, and what plants and trees grew there. The complex evidence has been turned into a compelling animated tour showing how the landscape might have looked and how families made a living from the land and the sea.

The Seabed Prehistory project was established to research ways of identifying evidence of prehistoric landscapes in and around aggregate dredging areas. This dredging provides many of the raw materials, such as gravel, needed for the buildings industry. The project was designed to see if equipment that is commonly used by the offshore industry could also identify archaeological remains. It was an opportunity for archaeologists and the aggregate industry to work together to gain a better understanding of the archaeology under the seabed. The results of this project will inform future proposals for new aggregate dredging licences.

The picture is built up with data collected as part of the project, or inferred from other research. Geophysical survey identified the different geological layers in the study area, revealing the shape of the land. Vibrocores were used to gather evidence from the buried landscape. Vibrocores are tubes that are pushed into the seabed. The column of sediment that is caught within the tube contains layers of ancient soils.

Ancient Welsh people from the Iron Age were defended by forts, often built on cliff-top promontories for extra security. The very reasons they chose these locations create problems today with the narrow strips of land being eroded on both sides by the sea. A partnership between the National Trust and Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority is helping to ensure that these important monuments remain safely accessible to interested visitors, while making sure they are protected from the impact of pounding feet.

At Longhouse, a promontory fort between St Davids and Fishguard, the path has been routed away from eroding cliffs. The new footpath will also help protect the fort's ramparts. Similar concerns led to work at Porth y Rhaw where footpaths crossed the ramparts and ran along crumbling clifftops.

Emma Plunkett Dillon, archaeologist for the National Trust, said, "We know that features like Porth y Rhaw are very popular but unfortunately such historic landmarks can't withstand the impact of large numbers of visitors. We have to consider where the safest route lies and how people can enjoy seeing the fort whilst doing our best to make sure it will be around for future generations to enjoy."

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Archaeologist Andrej Gaspari is haunted by pieces of the past. His hometown river, the Ljubljanica, has yielded thousands of them—Celtic coins, Roman luxuries, medieval swords—all from a shallow 12-mile (19 kilometers) stretch. Those who lived near and traveled along the stream that winds through Slovenia's capital of Ljubljana considered it sacred, Gaspari believes. That would explain why generations of Celts, Romans, and earlier inhabitants offered treasures—far too many to be accidental—to the river during rites of passage, in mourning, or as thanksgiving for battles won.

The aim of this series of experiments was to empirically test the relationship between Acheulean handaxe form and effectiveness for butchery, and contribute to the continuing discussion regarding the factors influencing handaxe form. Whilst a number of small scale experiments have reported upon the efficacy of handaxes for butchery none has gone beyond the subjective experience of a single researcher using a small number of handaxes to butcher one or two carcasses. By using sixty handaxes, thirty fallow deer carcasses and two butchers we were able to produce a dataset which permitted the statistical analysis of the relationship between effectiveness (measured using the proxies of time and the scorings of the butchers) and nine measures of handaxe morphology (frontal and side symmetry, weight, length, breadth, thickness, percentage of the circumference worked, degree of thinning and degree of elongation). The archived dataset comprises a time log for the use of each handaxe (derived from video footage of the experiments) which details the time taken to complete the various processes involved in the butchery of half a deer carcass, digital images of the experimental handaxe assemblage and summary spreadsheets of the data collected - i.e. time and subjective scorings - for each butcher.

Vatican City - Greece's top religious leader asked Pope Benedict on Thursday to return a piece of the Parthenon in the Vatican Museums, Greek officials said.

Christodoulos, Orthodox archbishop of Athens and of all Greece, made the request during a visit when he and the Pope signed a joint declaration on issues of common concern, such as the defence of life.

According to spokespersons for Christodoulos, the Pope was a bit perplexed by the request, perhaps not knowing that the vast museums he technically owns as sovereign of Vatican City have a fragment of the 5th century BC structure.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Archaeology experts will be discussing the role their discipline has in today's society at a public discussion in Exeter on Saturday.The Future of Our Past, at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, will look at how archaeology has attracted enthusiasts as a result of popular television programmes on the subject.

Tickets for the event are free and can be picked up in advance at reception.

A PROPOSAL to run a land train as part of plans for a new £67.5m Stonehenge visitors centre has come under fire during the second week of the Salisbury public inquiry.

The aim is to use the train to transport tourists from the visitors centre to within walking distance of the ancient stones.

But the chairman of the Stonehenge Alliance, George McDonic, said the trains would conflict with both national and international policies that seek to protect the landscape around the World Heritage site.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Archaeologists working for English Heritage have begun examining 12,000 aerial photographs, some dating back to the Second World War, to identify historic sites on the brink of being lost to the North Sea.

The project is examining 137 kilometres (85 miles) of vulnerable coastline from Whitby to Donna Nook, in North East Lincolnshire, including Holderness, where erosion rates are as high as six metres per year.

"Rates of erosion along many parts of the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire coast are very high,” explained Peter Murphy, Coastal Strategy Officer with English Heritage. “It's also an area rich in archaeology, so it's a national priority to get the work done.”

A SILVER coin dating from the 13th century reign of King Henry III is among the medieval finds uncovered by archaeologists in the Walkergate area of Berwick.

The short-cross penny, which is still in very good condition having been preserved in the soil for centuries, dates from the 1260s.

"This date and the quality of the building's construction suggest that it may relate to the medieval heyday of Berwick," explained Chris Burgess, Northumberland county archaeologist.

"It appears to have been slightly disturbed by some of the later pits and robbing, but should be in a comparatively good state of preservation, having been largely protected by the depth of the dark-earths that overly it. Read the rest of this article...

Oh, of course this isn't about serial killers (but maybe it would make a good title for a movie), but Archaeological Data Service has a new article on experimental archaeology using Acheulean handaxes, and it is very interesting indeed:

Experts rush to make records of valuable sites before they disappear forever into the advancing North Sea

IT is rugged, dramatic and ever-changing.

And now the Yorkshire coast is to be scrutinized like never before.

Archaeologists are poring over 12,000 aerial photographs, some dating back to the Second World War, to uncover and identify historic sites on the brink of being lost to the North Sea.

The project, funded by English Heritage, is examining 85 miles (137km) of vulnerable coastline stretching from Whitby to Donnna Nook in North East Lincolnshire.The results will be fed into English Heritage's national Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey, which aims to provide the most detailed picture yet of the threat posed to the nation's heritage by rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and the managed realignment of the coastline.

In this central Turkish village, peasants and archaeologists celebrate a unique achievement -- a 3,246-year-old dam, once buried under mud and slime, is back in service to irrigate farmlands.

The dam is a heritage of the Hittites, who ruled over vast areas of the Middle East from 2000 to 1000 BC, fought Pharaoh Rameses The Great, among others, and built some of the biggest cities of the time in the heart of Anatolia, the Asian part of modern Turkey.

The 2,500 inhabitants of Alacahoyuk know the Hittites well: since the early 20th century, archaeologists have been digging the remains of a royal city at the entrance of their village about 160 kilometers (100 miles) east of Ankara.

The tombs of the settlement, its foundations still guarded by two imposing stone lions, have yielded some of the most precious Hittite treasures -- plates, jewelry, bronze and gold statuettes now on display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

St. Paul's stone coffin has been found beneath Rome's second largest basilica, but its contents remain a mystery, Vatican archaeologists announced today.

The sarcophagus dates back to about A.D. 390 and was uncovered in Rome's Basilica of St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls, named for its location beyond the ancient wall surrounding Rome's center.

Long believed to be buried beneath the church's altar, the coffin is now on display for the first time in centuries—its precious cargo, however, is not.

"For now we didn't open the sarcophagus to study the contents. Our aim was to unearth the coffin venerated as St. Paul's tomb, not to authenticate the remains," said Giorgio Filippi, the archaeologist of the Vatican Museum, who directed the excavations.

CONSERVATION work on the Seahenge wooden circle is continuing apace – but it will be at least a year before the Bronze Age monument will be on display in Lynn.The 4,000-year-old structure was uncovered by waves on the beach at Holme in 1998, sparking frenzied interest from the archaeological community.

In 1999 the pieces were excavated and preserved before they were handed to the Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth for conservation, with the ultimate aim of putting them on display in Lynn.

The pieces chosen to go on display in Lynn Museum are currently being removed from a waxy substance called peg, which holds the wood fibres together.

Over the next two or three months they will be freeze-dried to remove any remaining water, before they are cleaned by experts and transported to Lynn Museum.Robin Hanley, area museums manager for West Norfolk, said staff will spend the following six months painstakingly creating mounts and supports for the individual pieces.

Ancient remains, once thought to be a key link in the evolution of mankind, have now been shown to be 400,000 years too young to be a part of man's family tree.

The remains of the apeman, dubbed Little Foot, were discovered in a cave complex at Sterkfontein by a local South African team in 1997. Its bones preserved in sediment layers, it is the most complete hominid fossil skeleton ever found.

Little Foot is of the genus Australopithecus, thought by some to be part of the ancestral line which led directly to man. But research by Dr Jo Walker and Dr Bob Cliff of the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment, with Dr Alf Latham of Liverpool University's School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, shows the remains are more than a million years younger than earlier estimates.

The team used uranium lead chronology to date the remains. Working on extracts of stalagmite deposits from immediately above and below the body, they dated the skeleton at around 2.2 million years old.

She's 2,500 years old, stunningly beautiful and at the center of the latest smuggling scandal to have sullied the world of antiquities.

On Monday the Los Angeles-based J. Paul Getty Museum announced it would return a sixth century B.C. marble statue of a young woman to Greece following claims by the Greek government that the artwork was illegally excavated and taken out of the country without proper authority.

The statue is one of two ancient artifacts on their way back to the Aegean from the display cases of the Getty Villa in Malibu -- the section of the J. Paul Getty Museum specializing in classical remains from Greece and Italy. The other is a fourth century B.C. gold funerary wreath.

"It is the appropriate way to resolve complex ownership claims involving ancient works of art," declared a museum statement.

Archaeologists digging to reach the tomb of St Paul have stumbled across a life-size "sketch" of the dome of St Peter's produced by one of its architects in the 16th century.

The excavation of St Paul's tomb at the church of St Paul's Outside-the-Walls in Rome is now complete, and the sarcophagus will be on view from the beginning of next year.

However, three feet below the floor of the enormous church, which is the second-largest in the city, the project's team came across a surprise from the Renaissance.

An architectural drawing of the arches and walls of the dome of St Peter's had been carved into 1,726 marble slabs by Giacomo Della Porta, who took over the design and construction work of the dome after the death of Michelangelo. The slabs had formed the floor of the church at the time.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

This film tells how forensic sciences and archaeology have been used to investigate international human-rights abuses in trouble spots around the world. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), an international Non-governmental Organization (NGO), took footage of forensic investigations they carried out in Argentina, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, and East Timor in order to tell the story of what they do. Exhumation and reburial sequences document the heavy emotional toll befalling survivors and their families.

A piece of jawbone known to be thousands of years old is being re-examined by scientists who believe it may be Britain's first direct evidence of Neanderthal man.

The bone was excavated from Kents Cavern in Torquay, south Devon in 1927 and was thought to be about 31,000 years old.

However a team at the Natural History Museum are wondering if the jawbone is actually more ancient, perhaps from a Neanderthal.

The new research was initiated when Dr Roger Jacobi and Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum obtained new radio-carbon dating for animal bones found in cave sediments directly above and below where the jaw fragment was found.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican said on Monday it was studying the possibility of opening a thick marble sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the 1st century apostle St Paul to study its contents.Click to learn more...

The prospect was raised at a news conference at which Vatican officials unveiled the results of an archaeological dig which has made part of the sarcophagus in Rome's Basilica of St Paul's Outside the Walls visible to pilgrims.

"We tried to X-ray it to see what was inside but the stone was too thick," said Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, archpriest of the basilica on Rome's outskirts.

"We will now take the necessary steps to seek the authorisation to explore the inside. This is being studied," he said, adding that the Pope would have to give eventual permission since the Vatican owns the basilica.

A series of medieval frescoes painstakingly restored over nearly a decade was unveiled to the public in Rome Tuesday.

Visitors, including Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, were on hand to take a first glimpse at the 13th-century frescoes in the Santi Quattro Coronati monastery, which sits atop a hill in Rome.

The secluded area was formerly a closed community where the Augustinian nuns had maintained cloistered lives since the 16th century.

While the monastery is not usually open to the public, Rutelli said the area where the frescoes are located will be opened in the spring so everyone can enjoy them.

A team of six experts carried out the restoration project, which began in 1997 and was financed completely by the Cultural Heritage Ministry.

Following news that archaeologists in Rome have discovered a sarcophagus containing what they believe to be the mortal remains of St. Paul the Apostle, we offer a few tips on how to get in on the world of excavation.

Forget the bull whip

It might have got Indiana Jones out of a scrape or two, but then Indiana Jones has little if anything to do with real archaeology. Excavators these days are far more likely to be armed with a theodolite and laptop than a whip and pistol, so if you are working on the assumption that archaeology = glamour you're going to be sorely disappointed. Mind you, if you find yourself digging somewhere hot then an Indiana Jones Fedora might come in useful.

Study hard, get the qualifications

Gone are the days of the enthusiastic amateur -- men such as 19th Century businessman Heinrich Schliemann who, having made a fortune contracting during the Crimean War, decided to turn his hand to excavating and, at Mycenae and Troy, made some of the most spectacular discoveries in the history of archaeology. These days archaeologists are highly qualified, technically skilled professionals -- simply being able to poke around in the ground with a trowel is no longer enough. Draughtsmanship, surveying, micro-botany, photography, material conservation, epigraphy, digital design, cartography, computing -- these are just a few of the skills that are required on a modern archaeological mission (although not all necessarily by the same person).

A white marble sarcophagus believed to be the final resting place of St. Paul has been unearthed from beneath the altar of Rome's second-largest basilica after centuries hidden from view, but those curious about its contents will have to wait still longer.

Vatican experts, announcing Monday that the coffin had been unearthed, said they hoped to be able to examine it more closely and maybe even look inside.

But Giorgio Filippi, a Vatican archaeologist, said researchers' first concern was to free it from centuries of plaster and debris in the hope of finding other clues on the sarcophagus itself.

'Right now we can treat it as a symbol, regardless of its contents,' Filippi said.

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.

The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently.

Throughout most of human history, the ability to digest lactose, the principal sugar of milk, has been switched off after weaning because there is no further need for the lactase enzyme that breaks the sugar apart. But when cattle were first domesticated 9,000 years ago and people later started to consume their milk as well as their meat, natural selection would have favored anyone with a mutation that kept the lactase gene switched on.

Roman emperors had to implement drastic reforms in the third century. In order to retain their position of power in this turbulent period they developed an emperor ideology. With this they increasingly laid claim to their dynastic and godly position, says Dutch researcher Janneke de Jong. Using Greek papyrus texts she investigated how the power of Roman emperors was presented and received in Egypt, at that time a Roman province.

De Jong analysed about two-hundred Greek papyrus texts from a digital database containing 4500 documents. Examples are edicts, contracts, petitions, administrative correspondence and censuses. In the third century, Greek was the administrative language in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.

Many ancient texts are dated according to the regnal year of the current emperor, who was referred to by his name and/or titles. De Jong noticed a change in the form of legitimisation the emperors’ power position in the titles. The emperors increasingly emphasised their dynastic position by referring to their sons and future successors in the titles. They also increasingly laid claim to godly support.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

From December 19 to 23—if the weather cooperates—20 lucky people a day will crowd into an ancient Irish monument's main chamber. There, they'll bathe in 17 minutes of light put off by the rising sun on the shortest days of the year.

This year about 28,000 people applied to take part in the ritual at the Newgrange monument, located in the Irish countryside in County Meath, reports the Brú na Bóinne Visitor Center (Ireland map).

The Stone Age monument dates to around 3200 B.C., making it 500 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and a thousand years older than England's Stonehenge.

Archaeologists believe the grass-covered mound in Ireland is a "passage tomb." A tunnel runs to a cavelike chamber, where the remains of the dead were placed. (Related video: "Ireland's Mysterious Newgrange Tomb".)

Wessex Archaeology is one of the largest commercial archaeological practices in the UK, employing over 160 people. We are a registered charity with educational objectives and play a vital role in helping people learn about their past.

In September 2005, we decided the Wessex Archaeology gallery (on the web) was looking a little long in the tooth. It was using a proprietary ASP gallery script and the process of uploading new photos was a pain. We had to manually create thumbnails, medium and large size versions of each photo, and follow a rigid structure. There was no chance for people to interact with the photos themselves, and the script itself was not particularly reliable.

THE team behind the most important bronze age site in Europe are making a bid for a £1 million grant.Flag Fen Bronze Age Centre in Fengate, Peterborough, relies solely on grants and donations to keep up its important archaeological work and growing tourist appeal.

Today, general manager Georgia Butters and her team are hoping to be given the Heritage Lottery Fund cash to make the centre and surrounding 20-acre park – which welcomed more than 14,000 visitors last year – more people friendly.

Ms Butters said the centre had launched a city-wide consultation project to find out exactly what residents want to see introduced.

A Turkish official appealed Thursday for the cancellation of a dam project in his country, saying it would destroy cultural heritage and do little to boost economic development.

"Of course we want economic and social development ... but development should not disregard people, nature and history," said Osman Baydemir, president of the Union of South Eastern Anatolia Municipalities and mayor of Diyarbakir.

The Ilisu dam, on the Tigris River 47 kilometers (30 miles) north of the Syrian border, will be one of the largest dams in Turkey and is scheduled to be completed by 2013. A ground breaking ceremony took place in August.

Opponents of the project say it will flood dozens of towns and destroy archaeological treasures including the medieval fortress city of Hasankeyf, which overlooks the Tigris.

The remains of the apeman, dubbed Little Foot, were discovered in a cave complex at Sterkfontein by a local South African team in 1997. Its bones preserved in sediment layers, it is the most complete hominid fossil skeleton ever found.

Little Foot is of the genus Australopithecus, thought by some to be part of the ancestral line which led directly to man. But research by Dr Jo Walker and Dr Bob Cliff of the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment, with Dr Alf Latham of Liverpool University's School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, shows the remains are more than a million years younger than earlier estimates.

The team used uranium lead chronology to date the remains. Working on extracts of stalagmite deposits from immediately above and below the body, they dated the skeleton at around 2.2 million years old.

Their findings, published in the American journal Science, are controversial. Earlier estimates had put the age of Little Foot at three to four million years old placing it potentially on a direct line to humans.

Infants may have been considered equal members of prehistoric society, according to an analysis of burial pits found in Austria.

Two separate pits, one containing the remains of two infants [image] and the other of a single baby [image], were discovered at the same Stone Age camp of Krems-Wachtberg in Lower Austria. Both graves were decorated with beads and covered in red ochre, a pigment commonly used by prehistoric peoples as a grave offering when they buried adults.

Using radiocarbon dating, archaeologists from the Prehistoric Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences put the remains at about 27,000 years old.

"Nothing comparable to these burials of such young Upper Paleolithic individuals has been found before," study co-author Christine Neugebauer-Maresch wrote in a recent edition of the journal Nature.

Friday, December 08, 2006

The human family tree will have to be redrawn in the wake of a discovery that an apeman skeleton is not as old as originally thought, suggesting it may not be a direct ancestor of humankind.

Known as "Little Foot" and found in 1997 in a cave in South Africa, the skeleton was remarkably complete and thought to be between two million and four million years old, suggesting this kind of hominid could have paved the way for the first tool makers.

With its combination of human and ape-like features, scientists hoped that the well-preserved hands and feet of Little Foot would shed light on when early hominids began using tools and walking upright.

But now the apeman has been dated precisely to 2.2 million years old by scientists at the Universities of Leeds and Liverpool, making it about 400,000 years too young to be a part of man's family tree.

The tomb of St Paul the Apostle has been found under one of Rome's largest churches and the stone coffin will shortly be raised to the surface to allow pilgrims to see it.

The remains of St Paul, one of the Christian Church's most important leaders and the supposed author of much of the New Testament, have been hidden under an altar at St Paul Outside-the-Walls for almost 200 years.

"I have no doubt that this is the tomb of St Paul, as revered by Christians in the fourth century," said Giorgio Filippi, the Vatican archaeologist who made the discovery.

Dr Filippi will present the results of his scientific tests on the remains of the saint on Monday at the Vatican. St Paul's sarcophagus was found after five years of extensive excavations at the church, which is second only in size to St Peter's in Rome. Dr Filippi began looking for the tomb at the request of Archbishop Francesco Gioia, within whose jurisdiction the church falls.

ENGLISH Heritage has called on the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Ruth Kelly to seize a once-in-a-generation opportunity' and approve plans for the controversial Stonehenge visitor centre.

It made the plea on Tuesday at the opening of the two-week public inquiry into plans to build the centre on land east of the Countess Road roundabout in Amesbury.

First to give evidence was the chairman of English Heritage, Sir Neil Cossons, who spoke of the importance of Stonehenge and the need for the scheme.

Describing the world heritage site as the "most important, best known and most visited monument in the country", Sir Neil said that English Heritage had developed a proposal that balances conservation and protection of the stones with improving the access and enjoyment that visitors get out of the site.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

A sumptuous trove of ancient Afghan treasure went on show in a Paris museum yesterday after escaping the destruction of the Taleban regime while hidden in vaults under the presidential palace in Kabul.

The items, some dating from the great civilisations before the Roman Empire, owe their survival to a scheme involving seven keys that would have befitted a central Asian fable.

At the heart of the exhibition, in the Guimet museum, is a collection of jewellery, dress and other artifacts of gold and precious stones from the first century AD that were found in 1978 by Soviet archeologists at Tillia-Tepe, in northern Afghanistan.

The “hoard of Bactrian gold”, never before seen in public, had been give up for lost until 2003, when President Karzai announced that it was part of a haul of 21,618 treasures that had been discovered in the presidential vault. French experts have cleaned and restored the 228 objects at the show, which was promoted by President Chirac and President Karzai.

A priceless collection of Afghan gold, thought to have been destroyed by the Taliban, resurfaced in Paris yesterday after mysteriously disappearing almost 20 years ago.

A hundred items from the so-called Hoard of Bactrian Gold – a trove of stunning artefacts from the first century AD – are now on public display in the Guimet museum near the Eiffel tower. The delicate masterpieces include granite or turquoise encrusted necklaces, goblets, cupids, dolphins, dragons, and a thumb-sized ram figurine.

The exhibition, Afghanistan – the Refound Treasures, displays 228 objects dating from 2000 BC to the third century AD. They form part of a hoard of 21,618 items of gold, ivory and precious stone unearthed by archaeologists in 1979 from six Bactrian tombs at a site in Tillya Tepe, in the north of Afghanistan.

For years, experts feared the objects had been spirited out of the country to be sold to private collectors from the bazaars of Peshawar, or melted down and sold to fund Islamic Jihad.

Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul that had been buried beneath Rome's second largest basilica.

The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least A.D. 390, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and was completed last month, the project's head said this week.

"Our objective was to bring the remains of the tomb back to light for devotional reasons, so that it could be venerated and be visible," said Giorgio Filippi, the Vatican archaeologist who headed the project at St. Paul Outside the Walls basilica.

The interior of the sarcophagus has not yet been explored, but Filippi didn't rule out the possibility of doing so in the future.

Two ancient churches that once stood at the site of the current basilica were successively built over the spot where tradition said the saint had been buried. The second church, built by the Roman emperor Theodosius in the fourth century, left the tomb visible, first above ground and later in a crypt.

From the Grand Canyon to Governors Island, ancient Alaskan villages to Virgin Island reefs, American archaeology is quietly celebrating a centennial.At two national parks — El Morro (N.M.) and Montezuma Castle (Ariz.) national monuments — simple commemorations Friday will mark 100 years since the federal Antiquities Act was signed by President Theodore Roosevelt.

"The Antiquities Act absolutely was a major step for professional archaeology," says archaeologist Jane Waldbaum, head of the Archaeological Institute of America. "The act raised up the public image of archaeology to a highly responsible one," she says, particularly after Congress chartered her organization two months after the signing of the law June 8, 1906.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul that had been buried beneath Rome's second largest basilica.

The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least 390AD, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and was completed last month, the project's head said.

"Our objective was to bring the remains of the tomb back to light for devotional reasons, so that it could be venerated and be visible," said Giorgio Filippi, the Vatican archaeologist who headed the project at St. Paul Outside the Walls basilica.

The interior of the sarcophagus has not yet been explored, but Filippi didn't rule out the possibility of doing so in the future.

Diversified social roles for men, women, and children may have given Homo sapiens an advantage over Neanderthals, says a new study in the December 2006 issue of Current Anthropology. The study argues that division of economic labor by sex and age emerged relatively recently in human evolutionary history and facilitated the spread of modern humans throughout Eurasia.

"The competitive advantage enjoyed by modern humans came not just from new weapons and devices but from the ways in which their economic lives were organized around the advantages of cooperation and complementary subsistence roles for men, women, and children," write Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner (University of Arizona).

Kuhn and Stiner note that the rich archaeological record for Neanderthal diets provides little direct evidence for a reliance on subsistence foods, such as milling stones to grind nuts and seeds. Instead, Neanderthals depended on large game, a high-stakes resource, to fuel their massive body mass and high caloric intake. This lack of food diversity and the presence of healed fractures on Neanderthal skeletons--attesting to a rough-and-tumble lifestyle--suggest that female and juvenile Neanderthals participated actively in the hunt by serving as game drivers, beating bushes or cutting off escape routes.

Warned that the barrage of Persian arrows would hide the sun at Thermopylae, the Spartan hero Dienekes replied with cool bravado, It will be pleasant to fight in the shade.

Known for their terse, unflinching way of speaking, these consummate warriors from the Lakonia region of Greece were known as laconic, or sparing of words. The term also applies to their art.

'Athens-Sparta,' opening Wednesday at the Onassis Cultural Center, presents 289 archaeological artifacts from the paramount city states of ancient Greece to illustrate their very different social and artistic legacies.

Archaeologists in Leicester, England, have recently uncovered a treasure trove of Roman and medieval artifacts, including a 1,700-year-old Roman "curse tablet."

Curse tablets were metal scrolls on which ancient Romans wrote spells to exact revenge for misdeeds, often thefts of money, clothing, or animals.

Such tablets have been discovered previously in Britain, often near ancient Roman temple sites, but this is the first one to be found in Leicester (see United Kingdom map).

The Leicester tablet, which was uncovered near the ruins of a large Roman townhouse dating from the second century A.D., was found unrolled. Curse tablets were typically rolled up and nailed to posts inside temples or shrines.

Struggling for survival, Neandertals turned to cannibalism—even brain-eating—some 43,000 years ago, says a new study of mutilated bones discovered in a Spanish cave.

The fossil remains also suggest that these prehistoric humans looked different from their northern counterparts.

Bones from at least eight individuals showed clear signs of cannibalism, including defleshing, dismemberment, and skinning, according to the study team.

The report provides some of the clearest evidence yet that Neandertals (often spelled "Neanderthals") ate their own kind, says paleoanthropologist Antonio Rosas of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid. Rosas is the lead researcher for the study, which is published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

An unusual haul of Neanderthal bones has disclosed how our beetle-browed cousins eked out such a meagre existence that they were probably driven to eat each other.

Evidence of cannibalism has come from the analysis of samples from 43,000-year-old remains in north-west Spain.

Fossilised clay contains the footbones and ribs of Neanderthal man found in Asturias Antonio Rosas of the National Museum of Natural Science in Madrid and colleagues led by Javier Fortea of Oviedo University excavated an underground cave system at El Sidrón, in Asturias, where eight Neanderthal skeletons have been found in the past six years.

"What is absolutely new is to find remains of at least eight individuals concentrated in a very small space inside the cave, and more importantly, with virtually no animal remains" said Dr Rosas. "This is really strange."

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Neanderthal Man was a cannibal who supplemented a meagre diet with occasional meals of meat from his own species, new research has suggested.

An analysis of Neanderthal bones and teeth from 43,000 years ago has revealed important details of their diet and lifestyle, including some of the best evidence yet for cannibalism among the close relatives of modern human beings.

Many of the skeletons found in a cave at El Sidrón, in Asturias, Spain, carry cut marks consistent with having been butchered for meat, scientists studying the remains of eight Neanderthal individuals have found.

Other long bones from the arms and legs have been broken apart, apparently to remove nutritious bone marrow to eat, and some of the skulls show signs of having been opened to get at the brains.

There are only 23 more of them in the world and it's been 80 years since anybody found some before these ones turned up.

What are these rare artefacts? They are mysterious bronze spoons, always found in pairs, dating from 800 BC – 100 AD, and Shrewsbury Museum is the proud owner of the most recently discovered set.

Local metal detectorist Trevor Brown found the spoons in mid-Shropshire in 2005, and reported them to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Archaeologists recognised the spoons as coming from the Iron Age, but what they were used for is uncertain.

At least that's the word from the most recent edition of Current Anthropology. Here's a brief write-up on a new theory of why humans may have advanced beyond their Neanderthal cousins:

Kuhn and Stiner note that the rich archaeological record for Neanderthal diets provides little direct evidence for a reliance on subsistence foods, such as milling stones to grind nuts and seeds. Instead, Neanderthals depended on large game, a high-stakes resource, to fuel their massive body mass and high caloric intake.

This lack of food diversity and the presence of healed fractures on Neanderthal skeletons -- attesting to a rough-and-tumble lifestyle -- suggest that female and juvenile Neanderthals participated actively in the hunt by serving as game drivers, beating bushes or cutting off escape routes.

The Middle Paleolithic Neanderthal record also lacks the artifacts commonly used to make weather-resistant clothing or artificial shelters, such as bone needles. Thus, it was the emergence of "female" roles -- subsistence and skill-intensive craft -- that allowed H. sapiens in ecologically diverse tropical and sub-tropical regions to take advantage of other foods and live at higher population densities.

Neanderthals lived a desperately tough life, sometimes so close to starvation that when one of them died their compatriots would fall upon the body and devour it, according to new research.

Scorned as clumsy, idiotic brutes with little in the way of developed culture, our pitiless modern view of Neanderthals may be tempered by new findings that provide insight into the terrible life our evolutionary cousins faced.

Antonio Rosas, of the National Museum for Natural Sciences in Madrid, Spain, and colleagues studied 43,000-year-old Neanderthal remains found in the El Sidrón cave in the north of the Iberian peninsula.

The cave is extraordinarily rich in Neanderthal remains. About 1300 Neanderthal fossils have been excavated since its accidental discovery in 1994. And the picture emerging from analysis of the remains is now enriching our understanding of the much-maligned species.

Neanderthals suffered periods of starvation and may have supplemented their diet through cannibalism, according to a study of remains from northwest Spain.

Paleobiologists studied samples from eight 43,000-year-old Neanderthal skeletons excavated from an underground cave in El Sidrón, Spain since 2000. The study sheds light on how Neanderthals lived before the arrival of modern humans in Europe.

Researchers found cut marks and evidence that bones had been torn apart, which they say could indicate cannibalism.

"There is strong evidence suggesting that these Neanderthals were eaten," said the study's lead author, Antonio Rosas of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid. "That is, long bones and the skull were broken for extraction of the marrow, [which] is very nutritious."

Monday, December 04, 2006

ITALIAN archaeologists have unearthed remarkably well-preserved imperial insignia that belonged to Emperor Maxentius and were buried for safekeeping after he was defeated by his Christian rival Constantine.

Excavation under Rome's Palatine Hill near the Colosseum turned up items including three lances and four javelins that experts said were striking for their completeness - digs usually turn up only fragments - and the fact that they are the only known artefacts of their kind.

Some of the objects, which accompanied the emperor during his public appearances, are believed to be the base for the emperor's standards - rectangular or triangular flags, officials said. An imperial sceptre with a carved flower and a globe, and a number of glass spheres, believed to be a symbolic representation of the earth, also were discovered.

Archaeologists have unearthed what they say are the only existing imperial insignia belonging to Emperor Maxentius _ precious objects that were buried to preserve them and keep them from enemies when he was defeated by his rival Constantine.

Excavation under Rome's Palatine Hill near the Colosseum turned up items including three lances and four javelins that experts said are striking for their completeness _ digs usually turn up only fragments _ and the fact that they are the only known artifacts of their kind.

Clementina Panella, the archaeologist who made the discovery, said the insignia were likely hidden by Maxentius' people in an attempt to preserve the emperor's memory after he was defeated by Constantine I in the 321 A.D. battle of the Milvian Bridge _ a turning point for the history of the Roman empire which saw Constantine become the unchallenged ruler of the West.

"Once he's lost, his objects could not continue to exist and, at the same time, could not fall in the hands of the enemy," she said Friday.

MEMBERS of Stratford-upon-Avon Town Council and the Stratford Society reacted in anger to news this week that national chemist Superdrug filled in a medieval well at their new High Street shop without consultation.

Town councillor Maureen Beckett said yesterday she and other councillors had heard the news in dismay after Tuesday’s meeting and instructed town clerk Sarah Summers to find out if the council could take action.Read the rest of this article...

Archaeologists have unearthed what they say are the only existing imperial insignia belonging to Emperor Maxentius - precious objects that were buried to preserve them and keep them from enemies when he was defeated by his rival Constantine.

Excavation under Rome's Palatine Hill near the Colosseum turned up items including three lances and four javelins that experts said are striking for their completeness - digs usually turn up only fragments - and the fact that they are the only known artifacts of their kind.

Some of the objects, which accompanied the emperor during his public appearances, are believed to be the base for the emperor's standards - rectangular or triangular flags, officials said.

An imperial scepter with a carved flower and a globe, and a number of glass spheres, believed to be a symbolic representation of the earth, also were discovered.

Archaeologists claimed yesterday to have uncovered one of the world's first churches, built on a site believed to have once housed the Ark of the Covenant.

The site, emerging from the soil in a few acres in the hills of the Israeli occupied West Bank, is richly decorated with brightly coloured mosaics and inscriptions referring to Jesus Christ.

According to the team, led by Yitzhak Magen and Yevgeny Aharonovitch, the church dates to the late 4th century, making it one of Christianity's first formal places of worship.

"I can't say for sure at the moment that it's the very first church," said Mr Aharonovitch, 38, as he oversaw a team carrying out the final excavations before winter yesterday. "But it's certainly one of the first." He said the site contained an extremely unusual inscription which referred to itself, Shiloh, by name.

With the recent spate of news articles about our nearest human neighbor, much discussion has been up about how you should spell the name, with a 'th' or with a 't'. Originally I felt it was a no-brainer to stay with the 'th', because 1) that's what most people recognize, 2) no matter how you spell it, it's still pronounced Nee-an-der-tall, and 3) if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But I am just a public archaeologist and on most issues of such earth-shattering importance will waver if pressed. Here's a few links to what other bloggers are saying, and your opportunity to make your opinions known.

About Me

I am a freelance archaeologist and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland specializing in the medieval period. I have worked as a field archaeologist for the Department of Environment (Northern Ireland) and the Museum of London. I have been involved in continuing education for many years and have taught for the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education (OUDCE) and the Universities of London, Essex, Ulster, and the London College of the University of Notre Dame, and I was the Archaeological Consultant for Southwark Cathedral. I am the author of and tutor for an OUDCE online course on the Vikings, and the Programme Director and Academic Director for the Oxford Experience Summer School.